I’m not planning on spoiling Spider-Man 3 in my post today, but I will issue a pre-emptive SPOILER’S WARNING to anyone who ventures into the comments section. With the movie being out, people may want to talk about the film, so enter at your own risk.
Our own Chris Mautner has seen it, and he posted his spoiler-free review last night.
Moving on to news coverage, The Springfield News-Sun has a fun “Spider-Man A to Z” article up that covers everything from Amazing Fantasy #15 to Peter Parker being the ultimate zero. Sandman gets the “S” spot:
Sandman: One of Spider-Man’s earliest foes, convict Flint Marko, gets his due in the new movie. In his 1963 comics debut, Marko (an alias for William Baker) escaped the clink and wound up hiding out at an atomic testing site. Dumb move, Flint. But the blast gave him the ability to turn to sand. In 1981, the Sandman briefly became Mud-Thing after, get ready, merging with Hydro-Man. Only in comics.
–The International Herald Tribune, meanwhile, looks at the women not only in the new Spider-Man flick, but in several other superhero flicks:
Forget Kryptonite. Are women the real Achilles’ heel for superheroes? Would these caped and masked crusaders be better off as loveless loners?
“Absolutely,” said Sam Raimi, director of the three “Spider-Man” movies, whose latest installment has Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane used both physically and psychologically by the bad guys to ensnare Tobey Maguire’s Spidey.
“In fact, that’s the path that Tobey’s character, Peter Parker, chose at the end of the first picture,” when Peter decided that with his Spider-Man alter ego, he had to avoid personal intimacy to protect those he loved and to do his job well, Raimi said. “Unfortunately, it’s hard to live up to that ideal, and in the second picture, he weakened and wanted a life with her.”
–Along with every great summer blockbuster comes a (not always) great video game. The Spider-Man games for the previous two movies were actually a lot of fun, so hopefully the third will continue that trend. For folks who have a Wii, this video posted by GamingBits.com offers a look at how the controls will work for the game:
–Entertainment Weekly’s Popwatch blog, meanwhile, laments the fact that most of the songs on the soundtrack aren’t used in the film:
PopWatchers, I have to admit, I was a bit baffled by this; why would Sony bolster its indie cred by making a soundtrack with hip/hot/happin’ bands like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Flaming Lips, the Killers, and Jet if they weren’t even going to use them in the actual movie?
But then I noticed something: the fine print on the CD jacket, which said, ”Music from and inspired by….” And I thought about how bad, black-suited Spidey — in his civvies, Tobey McGuire with an irresponsibly trendy combover and heavy black eyeliner — was, in fact, the emo-embodiment of the music on the soundtrack! Eureka!
–We’ll have more Spidey news over the weekend, as we find out if the webslinger can take back the top opening weekend spot from Jack Sparrow. Wealth and fame, he’s ignored, action is his reward …
